Andrew Doran
Andrew Doran
Andrew Doran
I write here in order to work things out and understand myself better. I write here in order to put things down that I have been carrying around in my head, so I don’t need to carry them around anymore. I write here in order to capture a moment and have something that I can look back on, remembering what I thought and felt at the time.
Latest Posts
Weeknotes #358 — Mid-life pondering
We had a dusting of snow that seemed to be completely localised to Berkhamsted. Just enough for the kids in the street to get out on their sledges and whizz down our street. On...
Interesting to see this in the notes for the FT’s News Briefing podcast. Is 2026 the year where we start to see messages like this everywhere?
Finished reading Faithful Ruslan by Georgi Vladimov. Published in 1975 in West Germany, it is the story of the closure of a Soviet prison camp in the late 1950s, told from the...
Weeknotes #357 — We Whitchurch You a Merry Christmas
As it always does, Christmas week came and went so quickly. We started it with everyone in the house under the weather in one form or another, recovering from either illness or...
My last working week of the year. This period always has a strange feeling about it. The trains are slightly emptier, and the office is quiet. The cogs of the office are turning...
📚 How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Finished reading How to Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. Early in the book the author herself says that: …you’ll find that this book is a bit oddly...
Tools for discovering the IndieWeb
Over the past few years, I’ve seen some wonderful tools sprout up that encourage and facilitate the exploration of independent websites and blogs. These are fun and useful...
Weeknotes #355 — Fly-tipped house
Christmas tree near Chancery Lane station, London. Last weekend’s start of a cold turned into a full-blown one on Monday. I went into the office as usual but felt as though I...
Christmas bells outside the Holy Sepulchre Church in the City of London. The past couple of weeks have given us properly grotty weather. Wind and rain with a few days of...
Just booked our slot for the annual Scouts Christmas tree recycling collection. Feels weird as we don’t even have a tree yet.
Weeknotes #353 — Right about now
Another packed week, brimming with meetings. This was a week in which I: Joined various meetings about our sister company’s office refurbishment project, ahead of the start of...
Added an ‘/ai’ page to my site to disclose my use of generative AI, inspired by Damola Morenikeji’s /ai ‘manifesto’.
Gave my About page a long-overdue update. I’ve also added a /now page to the site too.
Weeknotes #352 — Doing thought work
A regular week, back in the office after last week’s trip to Barcelona. Things have suddenly turned very cold here in the UK. It’s feeling dark and wintry. This was a week in...